Affect

I really enjoyed learning about affect. It really got me thinking about why I play video games. Coming home from work tonight I was feeling pretty awful, I had had a bad day at work and altogether was in a pretty foul mood. When I was thinking about what I should do when I got home to lighten my mood, playing a video game popped straight into my mind.

Before tonight I had only thought about video games causing affect in the way of horrors etc. I had never really given much thought to the concept of a video game providing a form of happiness, particularly direct happiness. I planned to get home and play a game that would make me laugh and smile. Imminently, I picked Portal 2.

I had played Portal 1 about five times but was never able to actually finish it due to my save file being deleted or other similar reasons. I remembered how the game had made me laugh. I also considered that most of my games were more in the scary genres. So I put in the game and an hour later you would have never known I had been so grumpy!

Then I took a look at the rest of games I had: horrors and thrillers. I love to feel scared. Its a feeling that I generally don't get to feel. While my partner, a 180cm tall man squirms and squeals at the site of almost all insects, I the 149cm female strides along to the rescue to remove the 'huge' spider. The only things that manages to scare me are video games.

From now I think I will take more notice of how games affect me and why this is.